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Celebrating the Life of Prof. Raghavan

Ramaswamy (Raju) Raghavan, professor of physics in the College of Science passed away October
20, 2011. He was the beloved husband, brother, uncle, teacher, and colleague of many from all
around the world.

Ramaswamy S (Raju) Raghavan started his research career in nuclear physics as a graduate
student at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India and continued his
studies at Purdue University, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1964 with post-parity beta decay
experiments under Rolf Steffen. He then spent several years at the Technical University Munich
in the institutes of Paul Kienle and Rudolf Moessbauer. He returned to the U. S. in 1972 and
spent the next 32 years at Bell Laboratories, where he became Distinguished Member in 1989.
He had a unique career there as one of the few who pursued nuclear and neutrino interests far
from the main Bell Labs interests in solid state physics, and was elected a Fellow of the
American Physical Society in 1984. When the basic research programs in Bell Labs were
terminated in 2004 he moved to Virginia Tech where he was Professor of Physics and Director of
the Institute for Particle, Nuclear and Astronomical Sciences.

His main interest at Bell Labs began with studies of hyperfine interactions of nuclei with
radioactivity as well as pulsed nuclear beams from the Rutgers' Bell tandem accelerator
(as an associate of the Rutgers Graduate Faculty), discovering numerous isomeric nuclei and
applying them for solid state physics as well as measurements of nuclear moments. However he
soon turned his attention to low energy neutrino science which became and continues to be
his lifelong passion and developed several "ultra" technologies for frontier
astroparticle physics experiments. He founded the Borexino Experiment in the Gran Sasso
Laboratory in Italy in 1988 which successfully measured the 7Be solar neutrinos
(indeed with 5% precision) as well detecting geophysical neutrinos from the earth's crust.
He invented a unique direct counting technique for the spectroscopy of the fundamental
proton-proton solar neutrinos which is being developed (as the LENS experiment) at
Virginia Tech. He has served in the committees of most of the international conferences of
Hyperfine Physics as well as low energy Neutrino Science.

"Dr. Raghavan is no doubt one of the distinguished scientists and leaders in the world neutrino
physics community," according to Atsuto Suzuki, Director General The High Energy Accelerator
Research Organization in Japan (KEK). Allesandro Bettini, Director of the Canfranc Laboratory
in Spain noted "Raju is one of the most creative physicists I ever met. His ideas are out of
the mainstream. His thinking is unconventional, something that is unfortunately becoming rarer
and rarer." Art McDonald, Director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada, also
commented that "Raju Raghavan is internationally recognized as a leader of the field of
neutrino physics and an innovator whose ideas and development work have resulted in many
contributions to the field."

"Raju was truly passionate about physics, and especially neutrino physics," said Beate
Schmittmann, professor of physics and head of the physics department. "He generated an immense
range of creative and innovative ideas, many of which were far ahead of the times."

His wisdom and passion for life and science has inspired many young people, both here at
Virginia Tech, as well as India, his spiritual home, where he was most recently advising senior
Indian government and laboratory directors on their new INO project, and exploring
possibilities for collaborating on the LENS project  an experiment he dedicated the last
several years to advance  with real success at Virginia Tech.